₦airaland Forum

What kind of school produces one 1st class out of every 15 graduands? Even Oxford and co no dey prolific like that abi no be dis same pickins who can't even get into federal schools? Dis fellow is just compounding our educational challenges with his half baked graduates tutored by part time profs.

The Orthodox and the Others
Israeli Mustard
by URI AVNERY
IT’S A true story. I have told it once, and I shall tell it again.
A friend of mine in Warsaw, who is half Jewish, advised a well-known Polish journalist to visit Israel, to see for himself.
When the journalist came back, he called my friend and reported breathlessly: “Do you know what I have discovered? There are Jews in Israel too!”
He meant, of course, the Orthodox, with their black clothes and large, black hats, who look like the Jews imprinted in Polish memory. They can be seen in any Polish souvenir shop, side by side with other figures from Polish folklore: the king, the nobleman, the soldier etc.
As this foreigner noticed immediately, these Jews bear no resemblance whatsoever to ordinary Israelis, who resemble ordinary Frenchmen, Germans and, well, Poles.
* * *
THE ORTHODOX (called in Hebrew “Haredim”, the “fearful”, those who fear God) are not part of the Israeli state. They don’t want to be.
Most of them live in isolated ghettos, which fill large parts of Jerusalem, the town of Bnei Brak and several huge settlements in the occupied territories.
When one thinks of a ghetto (originally the name of a Venice neighborhood), one thinks of the humiliating isolation once imposed by Christian rulers. But originally it was a self-imposed isolation. Orthodox Jews wanted to live together, separate from the general population, not only because it gave them a sense of security, but also – and mainly – because of their faith. They needed a synagogue they could reach on foot on Shabbat, a ritual communal bath, kosher food and many other religious requisites. They still need them in Israel and elsewhere.
But most of all they need to avoid contact with others. In modern times, with all the deadly temptations, they need it more – far more – than ever. With the streets full of big ads featuring unclad women, with TV spewing an endless stream of soft (and sometimes not so soft) pornography, with the internet full of tempting information and personal contacts – the Orthodox have to protect their children and keep them away from the sinful Israeli way of life.
This is a matter of sheer survival for a community that has existed for 2500 years, and that until some 250 years ago encompassed practically all Jews.
ZIONISM, AS I have often pointed out, was among other things a rebellion against Judaism, no less then Martin Luther’s rebellion against Catholicism.
When Theodor Herzl raised his flag, almost all East European Jews were still living in a ghetto-like Orthodox atmosphere, ruled by the rabbis. All these rabbis, almost without exception, saw Zionism as the great enemy, much as Christians view the Antichrist.
And not without reason. The Zionists were nationalists – adherents of the new European doctrine that human collectives are based primarily on ethnic origin, language and territory, not on religion. It was the opposite of the Jewish belief that Jews are the people of God, united by the obedience to his commandments.
As everybody knows, God exiled his Chosen People from their land because of their sins. Some day God will forgive them and send the Messiah, who will lead the Jews, including the dead, back to Jerusalem. The Zionists, in their crazy desire to do so themselves, were not only committing a deadly sin, but actually rebelling against the Almighty who had expressly forbidden his people to enter the holy country en masse.
Herzl and almost all the other Zionist Founding Fathers were convinced atheists. Their attitude towards the rabbis was condescending. Herzl wrote that in the future Jewish state, the rabbis would be kept in their synagogues (and the army officers in their barracks). All the leading rabbis of his time cursed him in no uncertain terms.
However, Herzl and his colleagues had a problem. How to get millions of Jews to trade in their old-time religion for the newfangled nationalism? He solved it by inventing the fiction that the new Zionist nation was merely a continuation of the ancient Jewish “people” in a new form. For this purpose, he “stole” the symbols of the Jewish religion and turned them into national ones: the Jewish prayer shawl became the Zionist (and now the Israeli) flag, the Jewish Menora (the temple candlestick) became the state’s emblem, the Star of David is the supreme national symbol. Almost all the religious holy days became part of the new national history.
This transformation was immensely successful. Practically all “Jewish” Israelis accept this today as gospel truth. Except the Orthodox.
THE ORTHODOX claim that they, and only they, are the real Jews and the rightful heirs of thousands of years of history.
They are quite right.
The Founding Fathers declared that they wanted to create a “new Jew”. Actually they created a new nation, the Israeli.
David Ben-Gurion, an avid Zionist, said that the Zionist Organization was the scaffolding for the building of the State of Israel, and with the building complete, it should be discarded. I go much further: Zionism as such was the scaffolding, and should now be discarded. The pretense that this is a “Jewish” state is the continuation of a fiction that may have been necessary at the beginning, but is redundant and even harmful now.
This pretense underlies the present situation: the Orthodox are considered by Israelis as a part of the Jewish-Israeli community, while behaving as a foreign people. It is not just that they do not salute the Israeli flag (as mentioned: the prayer shawl with the Star of David) and refuse to celebrate Independence Day (much like the Arab citizens, by the way) – but they also refuse to serve in the army or perform any other national service.
This is now one of the main bones of contention in Israel. Officially, the Orthodox claim that all their young men who are liable to be drafted – some 15 thousand every year – are busy studying the Talmud and cannot stop even for a day, much less for three years, like ordinary students. One rabbi declared last week that they actually serve the country more than ordinary combat soldiers, because they assure divine protection of the state.
The Supreme Court – so it seems- is not so much impressed by the divine protection and recently annulled a law that exempts the Orthodox, causing a political scramble for alternatives. A new law circumventing the court is in the making.
Actually, the Orthodox will never allow their children to join the army, because of the justified fear that they will be contaminated by ordinary Israelis – learning about night clubs, TV and – God forbid – hashish, and, worst of all, listening to the voices of female soldiers singing – considered an absolute abomination in Jewish religious law.
The separation between the Orthodox and others – between Jews and Israelis, so to speak – is almost complete. The orthodox speak another language (Yiddish, meaning “Jewish”) and have a different body language, dress differently, have a different world view. In their separate schools, they learn different stuff (no English, no mathematics, no secular literature, nor the history of other peoples).
Israeli alumni of state schools have no common language with alumni of Orthodox schools, because they have learned totally different stories. An extreme example: some years ago two rabbis published a book called “The King’s Way”, which states that killing children of non-Jews is justified if there is any fear that these, when grown up, would persecute Jews. Several senior rabbis endorsed the book. When pressed, the police started a criminal investigation for incitement. This week the Attorney General finally decided not to prosecute, on the grounds that the rabbis only quoted religious texts.
An Orthodox Jew cannot eat in an ordinary Israeli home (not kosher, or not kosher enough). He certainly will not let his daughter marry a “secular” Israeli boy.
The attitude towards women is perhaps the most striking difference. There is absolutely no gender equality in the Jewish religion. Orthodox men view their women – and the women see themselves – mainly as means of (re)production. The status of Orthodox women is determined by the number of their children. In certain neighborhoods of Jerusalem, it is quite usual to see a pregnant woman in her 30s surrounded by a crowd of her offspring, carrying a newborn in her arms. Families of 10 or 12 children are quite unexceptional.
A WELL-KNOWN Israeli commentator and TV personality recently wrote that the Orthodox should be “squeezed”. In reply, an Orthodox writer poured his wrath on “secular” personalities who did not protest, singling out “the untiring ideologue Uri Avnery”. So I should make my position clear.
As an atheist Israeli, I respect the Orthodox for what they are – a different entity. One might say: a different people. They live in Israel, but are not really Israelis. For them, the Israeli state is like any other Goyish state, and Israelis are like any other Goyish people. The difference is only that, by having Israeli citizenship, they can milk the state shamelessly. We practically finance their very existence – their children, their schools, their life without work.
My proposal for a sustainable modus vivendi is:
First, a complete separation of state and religion. Annul all laws based on religion.
Second, grant the Orthodox complete autonomy. They should elect their representative institutions and govern themselves in all religious, cultural and educational matters. They should be exempted from military service.
Third, the Orthodox should pay for their religious services themselves, with the help of their brethren abroad. Perhaps there could be a voluntary tax for this purpose, which the state would then transfer to the autonomy authority.
Fourth, there would be no “chief rabbinate” or other rabbis appointed by the state. These are anyhow rejected and, indeed, despised, by the Orthodox. (The irascible Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an observant Jew, once called Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren “the Clown with a Shofar”.)
I would, by the way, propose a similar autonomy for the Arab citizens, if they so wish.
THERE REMAINS the question of the so-called “National-Religious”. These are the offspring of the tiny minority of religious Jews who did join the Zionists right from the beginning. They are now a large community. Not only are they ardent Zionists, but they are ultra-ultra, leading the settlement enterprise and violent right-wing Zionism. They don’t just accept the state and the army – they aspire to lead both, and have made considerable progress in that direction.
Yet in religious affairs, too, they are becoming more and more extreme, approaching the Orthodox. Some Israelis already use the same term for both groups: “hardal” (which could be translated as “Nareor – National-Religious-Orthodox.) Hardal, by the way, means mustard.)
What to do with this mustard in an autonomy dish? Let me think a moment.
BY THE WAY: when an Israeli Jew is asked by a stranger anywhere in the world “what are you?” he always answers: “I am an Israeli”. He will never, ever, say: “I am a Jew”.
Except the Orthodox.
URI AVNERY is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book The Politics of Anti-Semitism

A couple of months back a 17 year old cousin who was still in school joined my family. I asked what class she was in and she said JSSII. Last result? She was 7th out of 183 students. I insisted on knowing her position in her arm of JSSII and she came back with 7th out of 183. I had to explain to her I meant her arm of JSSII as in JSSII A, JSSII B etc. She told me she was 7th in JSS II C which had 183 students. I then asked her how many arms JSS II had. The school was blessed with JSS II A – P. Seventeen arms of Junior Secondary School year Two with say an average of 180 rowdy kids per class? 3,000 kids in just one year of a Lagos state government owned junior secondary school within Alimosho local government area. Maybe 9,000 kids in that ‘half school’? Up to 1979 Birch Freeman High School, my alma mater, had about 500 students in all. Up to the mid ‘80s University of Ife had about 13,000 students. Today a woefully under resourced middle school principal must manage 9,000 students with help from chronically ill motivated staff. Alarming WAEC, NECO, JAMB failure rates largely explained.

For years now it has been my opinion that we cannot expect too much in the educational sector given the rot that pervades the nation with the twin devils of inadequate revenue generation and theft of state funds setting all hopes to naught. With no solution in sight for these weakened pillars of our socioeconomic space we must then ask ourselves what is achievable within our constrained circumstances and, having found the answer, mobilize all stakeholders (hackneyed word, yes) to pull together towards common objectives.

It is obvious that effective participation in even a pseudo modern economy like Nigeria’s requires at the least nine years of formal education. Society and the state cannot afford to have any segment drop out of the socio economy. Such cop outs from the system make threats like the current Boko Haram insurgency and even worse evils possible. It is thus uncontestable that the state must provide free, quality and ATTRACTIVE education made compulsory to all citizens between the ages of six and 15. Having a child or ward not in school between those ages must be criminalized with penalties stiff enough to deter offenders. Repeat offenders must be stopped from causing more harm to the child and storing up trouble for society by rescuing the kids from them.

Before we go clamping parents in cuffs though we must define a minimum standard for the education the state will freely provide for the children. Many of us are familiar with what state schools provide in the developed nations in the first several years of education. These are nations not desperately trying to develop as we claim to be but merely maintaining their vantage positions in the world and preventing the creation of socioeconomic challenges for their systems. We must do at least as much as they do. We must provide primary and junior secondary schools as good as the Rivers State government is creating at the moment with the necessary complement of adequate and well remunerated staff. Neither a great environment nor the best computer systems can turn a six year old tabula rasa to a teenager ready to master productive skills or acquire even more classroom knowledge. Great schools cannot be created without motivated teachers and those of us who went through Nigerian schools up to the mid ‘80s can testify that Nigerian teachers were once almost universally well motivated so there is nothing in the character of those who chose the noble profession or, in today’s economic clime, were ‘chosen’ by the profession that says they cannot be great instructors and inspirations to our kids. Indeed those of us who are fortunate enough to have children in Nigeria’s top drawer private schools can testify that this nation is still blessed with inspired and committed tutors.

While every child in state schools at this level must be provided with sufficient school kit (uniforms, shoes, books etc) and at least one hot meal a day the tutors themselves must be paid living wages that are within striking distance of what their peers earn in the industrial sector. It must be reiterated that there is no greater contribution to society than the grooming of the proverbial future leaders (and followers, factory workers, farmers artisans etc) thus a society must always find a way to fairly remunerate those called to the profession if it is not embarked on group suicide. This will cost quite a bit more than governments at all levels are willing and / or able to invest in education at the moment but I shall leave a discussion of how the financing circle can be squared for later.

Having ensured at great cost that every 15 year old Nigerian is fit for the 21st century does the ‘nanny state’ still owe the child anything? Yes and no. I propose that the state discriminates from the 10th year of schooling. The top 20% of senior secondary students should be supported 100% as they were in the first nine years of school. These are the nation’s greatest assets and they must not be abandoned at any time. The next best 20% of students at this level should be provided tuition free education only while their parents pick up the tab for feeding, school kits etc. the bottom 60% should pay economic (enough to fully recover the state’s expense) tuition fees if they and their parents believe they can make good use of more education. Of course they would cover all other expenses too.

Beyond limiting the education budget this part of my proposal has several other benefits too. First is the early inculcation of meritocracy and a spirit of excellence in the next generation. Additionally parents who believe their children should have all the education they can eat will be encouraged to put in every effort in the first nine years and beyond to save themselves from the heavy fees they would otherwise have to pay from year ten. Parents and students would be empowered with the feeling of being in control of their own future. Of course a teenager should be held responsible for the choices he makes including a decision to slack in school and cost his parents money they might not be able to afford. I predict that such a discriminatory system would rapidly turn around the annual lamentations over WAEC / JAMB results into celebrations.

At the tertiary level the same ‘apartheid’ should continue with the top 20% being fully catered for by the school (you will understand the switch from ‘state’ to ‘school’ soon), the next 20% not paying tuition while the last 60% paying not just economic fees but fees sufficient to generate a surplus to cover the cost of the partial and full scholarships for the top scholars. This isn’t enough to fix our tertiary education though.

Virtually every major private sector employer in Nigeria has its own in house training scheme where it refinishes the products of our universities and polytechnics. For companies like my current employer this is a multi billion naira effort annually. For some other companies they simply recruit only foreign trained graduates. This is obviously not sustainable and a better solution must be found.

The better option in my view is for large scale employers, those at the commanding heights of our economic sectors who cannot compromise on staff quality, to engage more in preventive rather than curative (palliative?) measures by taking charge of this critical educational level.

I propose that the federal government encourage the creation of trusts made of up of a mix of financial, industrial, petroleum, service etc companies. The 13 federal universities that existed up to the late ‘70s should be handed over to these trusts along with one off endowment funds of say $200m each. The trustees will be tasked with determining the needs of the schools, determining how to raise additional funds to move them to world class standards (hackneyed too) and be entirely in charge of their running as long as they are compliant with minimum standards such as the tiered structure discussed above. All expenses born by the trustees should be tax deductible as an incentive and reward to them.

If we can make a pilot with 13 universities work then we could move on to handing over every federal university and polytechnic to similar trusts. Federal government colleges (unity schools) and colleges of education should be handed over to their host states. I personally would be much happier when I know the obviously limited administrative capacity of our federal government is no longer frittered on a sector it has no business being involved in as a player.

With the federal government having shed fiscal responsibility for education how do we address the ‘unfair burden’ then placed on the states? As part of the current efforts being made to restructure the sharing formula for federally collected revenue an addition percentage of revenue should transferred to the states to help them cope with the fiscal challenges. However even an unlikely doubling of the state share of the current national cake will not quite meet the needs of this ambitious project. We must bake a much bigger cake and tax is the key.

The ECOWAS union set a target for each member state to attain a tax to GDP ratio of 20%. As at today only Ghana (again!) and Cape Verde have attained this modest target with Cape Verde hitting 23%. Nigeria manages to collect just 6%, barely a quarter of the Cape Verde performance and about a seventh of the circa 40% of EU and OECD nations. We immediately see we have massive room for improvement and it needn’t all be as difficult as one would imagine in our corruption tainted land. One of the ways ECOWAS suggested for its members to bridge the tax gap was for laggards like Nigeria to increase their VAT rate. Unlike Ghana and most nations of the world that charge 15% or more as VAT Nigeria charges only 5%. A fainthearted attempt was made a few years back to double this to 10% but it never took off.

VAT has been one of the few law enforcement and tax collection successes we have had in the last few decades and its success can be built on in increasing our tax performance. I would suggest a two stage move of the VAT rate, first to 10% and, after a couple of years, to 15%. One of the many ancillary benefits would be the enhancement of regional integration as the higher VAT states within ECOWAS have balked in the past from playing in the same field with Nigeria in view of the advantages its low VAT confers on its manufacturers’ price wise. Part of the reform of course would be the restructuring of the sharing formula for collected VAT. Obviously such restructuring would be easier at a time when overall income is increasing.

However VAT is not the only underutilized arrow in our tax quiver. It is a notorious fact that Nigeria’s stock market boomed a few years ago. Before fortunes were wiped out even bigger fortunes were made but 99% of the capital gains escaped the tax man. We must simplify collection of capital gains by making it a withholding tax. The stock exchange and its regulator should be co-opted into calculating profits made and withholding due tax before payments are made to sellers.

I welcome challenges and other responses to this piece.

Nope. Just showing that even the chief cabalist a few years ago was proposing the same solutions as CSOs and Labour are now advocating. If a man has already convicted himself why delay judgement?

US Government Secret Memo Warned Of Petrol Import Scams, NNPC Scandal
10/01/2012 22:02:00 THEWILL
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… Trafigura and Gusau’s Vitol Linked To Scam

SAN FRANCISCO, January 10, (THEWILL) – A United States Secret cable from its embassy in Nigeria published by Wikileaks alerted of the scam and fraud in the importation of petrol orchestrated by foreign dealers with the support of rogue government officials in the NNPC and customs.

The cable supports the revelation in THEWILL’s 2009 inaugural edition story titled: “Cartels Behind Nigeria's Continued Oil Imports.”

The scam has cost the Nigerian taxpayers trillions of naira over many years and untold hardship. Several senior government personnel have looked the other way and at most times aided the scam, while these vultures devoured our common wealth for their personal wellbeing in the name of fuel subsidy.
The US classified document titled: “Scandal brewing over Nigerian fuel imports” reads:

SUBJECT: SCANDAL BREWING OVER NIGERIAN FUEL IMPORTS
Classified By: J. GREGOIRE FOR REASONS 1.5 (B), (D), AND (E).

(C) SUMMARY. A scandal is brewing in Nigeria over prices paid by the government for imported fuel. International fuel traders have been falsifying the dates of bills of lading to reflect particularly high market prices, overcharging the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) by $300 million or more. END SUMMARY.

2. (C N/F) On April 2, Chris Finlayson, Chairman and Managing Director of Shell Petroleum Development Corporation of Nigeria (SPDC), told Consul General and Econoff that a scandal is brewing within the NNPC over payments made to international fuel marketers. Finlayson said some marketers have been changing the dates when fuel shipments bound for Nigeria were loaded in order to take advantage of particularly high market prices. He said the total overpayment by NNPC may be as high as $330 million. Finlayson noted that Shell is not one of the marketers in question, but is becoming a leading fuel supplier for NNPC.

3. (C N/F) On April 6, Femi Otedola, President and CEO of Zenon Petroleum and Gas, the largest supplier of diesel fuel in Nigeria, essentially corroborated Finlayson's report. Otedola said over $300 million has been overpaid by NNPC for fuel imports, and that many leading international traders are involved. According to Otedola, NNPC contracts to pay its suppliers the market price on the day a ship is loaded with fuel. He said NNPC recently discovered, however, that bills of lading were altered to reflect loading on days of high market prices. Discrepancies were found when comparing dates on the bills of lading with dates of landing in Lagos.

4. (C N/F) Pointing to examples, Otedola said that while a tanker loading fuel at a refinery in Bahrain usually takes four weeks to arrive in Lagos, comparisons between the bills of lading and dates of arrival of some shipments reflected only a four-day difference, and in other cases, if taken at face value, indicated the journey took nine months. Otedola said 73 shipments from refineries in the Persian Gulf, England, and Venezuela listed delivery times of only one day. NNPC is attempting to get compensation for the over-charge. Otedola went on that most of the fuel traders supplying Nigeria are implicated in over-charging NNPC, and showed a list of 17 companies that supplied fuel in the first quarter of 2004, several of which, he said, are significant players in international markets, such as Trafigura and Vitol. Otedola added that three companies clearly not involved in the scandal are British Petroleum, ChevronTexaco and Shell.

5. (C N/F) Otedola recommended that NNPC stop contracting with international fuel traders and negotiate purchases directly from refineries worldwide. According to him, such a move would have two positive effects. Otedola calculates that NNPC would save some four billion dollars a year in expenditures on imported fuel. (Note: Prior to deregulation in October 2003, NNPC, then the sole importer of fuel, lost two billion dollars per year because it sold stock to retailers below purchase price. After October 2003, NNPC initially stopped subsidizing fuel sales, letting marketers import fuel to be sold at market prices. However, sources agree that NNPC is back in the business of subsidizing gasoline sales while it maintains a facade of deregulation by encouraging private marketers to import fuel that NNPC purchases at market price. NNPC then sells the fuel to marketers and retailers at a reduced price to ensure that those companies maintain a profit margin while holding consumer prices to informal caps set by the Department of Petroleum Resources. End Note.)

6. (C N/F) Otedola added that by cutting out the international traders, NNPC would also enhance the environment in which Nigeria's refineries could be restored and operated. Otedola said he believes international fuel trade "mafias" are behind the failure to bring Nigeria's refineries back on-line and to capacity. Otedola is convinced these traders arrange for the vandalization of crude oil feeder pipelines, which keep the refineries at Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna closed or under-capacity. He said the international traders generally receive at least one million dollars per shipload of fuel to Nigeria and have grown accustomed to the easy money Nigeria offers as long its refineries remain down.

7. (C N/F) As an example, Otedola described an arrangement the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) had with Sahara Energy for the provision of diesel to an emergency power generation plant in Abuja. He said that while a pipeline was under construction to deliver fuel to the main power plant, NEPA paid some five billion dollars to Sahara over four years for diesel to the back-up plant. It was later discovered that NEPA had received only about one billion dollars worth of fuel, according to Otedola. Otedola said that he, too, was contracted to deliver diesel fuel to the plant on occasion; however, he petitioned the president to investigate the matter after becoming suspicious of NEPA's ongoing contract with Sahara and the fact that the pipeline for the power plant was never finished. He said his intervention led to an investigation that ultimately resulted in the cancellation of NEPA's contract with Sahara.

8. (C N/F) COMMENT: The allegation that international traders bilked NNPC of hundreds of millions of dollars is yet another example of the poor management of Nigeria's energy sector, [/b]and highlights the complex links between crude sales, fuel importation, refinery maintenance, and energy production here. Otedola is probably right in suggesting that long-standing sweetheart deals between the NNPC and a variety of fuel traders is keeping the system inefficient. That may also explain why the GON just can't seem to get its refineries running even after spending a billion dollars or more on maintenance contracts over the last four years. [b]Otedola said he initially bid to purchase the Port Harcourt refinery offered for privatization, but he recently told President Obasanjo he will not invest in the refinery so long as NNPC purchases fuel from traders instead of negotiating directly with refineries in other countries and leasing ships itself to deliver fuel to Nigeria. It is not clear if Otedola's assumption that the international traders' stake in Nigeria's current fuel market is the main driver behind the country's refinery woes. But it is clear that the fundamentals of infrastructure security, interim supply stability, and transactional transparency must still be addressed if the GON is to be taken seriously about its efforts to deregulate and largely privatize Nigeria's downstream petroleum sector. END COMMENT. HINSON-JONES

I love trekking anyway but its usually less than 10 minutes, 3 times per week and sometimes i go up to 1 month without trekking when am too busy and traveling a lot.

10 minutes a day doesn't cut it. 30 minutes, last I looked, is the daily quota prescribed for moderate cardiovascular fitness. Since I don't always get the time to achieve this daily I tend to do catch up which sometimes means as much as 180 minutes on the road. Need 80 minutes at least (at 10 minutes per km) to work up a decent sweat. Yes okadas and the like are the greatest threats but have survived them so far, thank God. Anyways we can't all relax with Gulder in hand and pepper soup at elbow

BMI is well below 25 and BP below 120/70 at age 47 so don't think I am desperately trying to correct a health deficit. But really walking and thinking go very well together for me. Ever noticed how all those prophets and avatars were itinerant ? There must be something about being on the hoof and having brainwaves.

bros me i tire for some people lie o: hotel presidential to oil mill junction no be beans o and na for evening he say he walk am.

So what will you say about Pleasure b/s to Ile Zik b/s along Abeokuta Expressway (18km round trip) or Dzorwulu to Trade Fair Complex in Accra (21km round trip)? The latter I did with my wife. Walking is my passion as I said. Oyinbos do what they call trekking / rambling for many times those distances. Do not be so quick to insinuate falsehood just because you are happier to jump onto a kamikaze okada instead of exercising your God given legs.  Happy to meet up with you in Lagos and walk from Idumota to Mushin from 5pm if you are still in doubt.

Sure did but a bit more than 45 minutes by my watch. Combining two passions: walking and thinking up ways to fix Naija.

Port Harcourt Traffic Gridlock

For three days last week I returned to Port Harcourt after a six year absence. I had earlier lived in the city for the 45 months up to October 2005. Rulership had changed hands while the militants had been mostly rested but that old blight of Port Harcourt had, if anything, worsened. Traffic congestion, particularly on the Aba Expressway (Crawlway more like) was definitely no better than I remembered it. Indeed, considering that the days I sallied forth were dry, it was worse despite the hundreds of billions in naira sunk into new roads, bridges, interchanges etc. I had read of the massive effort the current state governor, Rotimi Amaechi, had made on infrastructure and could see where the money was spent albeit not always with the right visual impact.

With all the new roads etc one could have been forgiven for thinking the ‘witches and wizards’ notorious for tying up Lagos roads had made Port Harcourt a second base just to frustrate the efforts of Amaechi. My assessment though suggested that the problem was nothing so esoteric and, praise the Lord, its solution wouldn’t need even more billions, from Bond or Derivation, to resolve.

While Dr Peter Odili ruled the Rivers manor things had been little different congestion wise. In 2003 or thereabouts I had engaged in a discussion on my employer’s online forum that attempted to tease out the root causes of Port Harcourt’s endemic traffic chaos. Things were so bad back then that we sometimes couldn’t get out of the office gate until midnight despite leaving one’s desk a little after 4pm. Such hell was common on days when it rained and the road junctions were abandoned by traffic police to the tender mercies of Nigerians’ uncommon civility. I once came from Lagos to Port Harcourt by road in about 10 hours and then spent six hours between Rumukrushi and Elelenwo! Such experiences weren’t unusual and were ‘evidence of the marginalization of the entire Niger Delta and Port Harcourt in particular by the Nigerian ‘federation’’. In the view of my interlocutors, all Port Harcourt needed to make its traffic ooze was a huge dollop of federal money to build many bridges on dry land same as had been done in Lagos. Once federal concern had been so expressed, the witches and wizards would be banished from PH roads and all would be well with the world.

My view was different and it wasn’t because I am a ‘Lagos Boy’ though my Lagos experience came in handy. I did a quick comparison between Ikorodu Road, a major Lagos artery, and Aba Expressway, not just a major PH artery but its very Aorta. On Ikorodu Rd I could do a U Turn at Jibowu, Anthony, Maryland or Ojota / Ketu while on Aba Expressway, which is definitely not longer than Ikorodu Rd, I had the freedom to cross to the other side of the road within 500 metres of any point at which I joined the road. Virtually every road that joined the Aba Expressway gave drivers the privilege of crossing to the other side of the road. And all these were level crossings moderated by traffic lights and officers, PHCN and weather permitting respectively. About two dozen level crossings on an ‘Expressway’, an Expressway that was so central to traffic circulating in PH. A very bad idea. The four crossings on Ikorodu Rd are all by bridges or underpasses. 

On my last evening in PH during my visit last week I walked from the presidential Hotel to Oil Mill Junction not just for my constitution but to see if anything had changed. I noticed the drainage work going on and the adjoining roads being worked on alongside roads and bridges already delivered. Obviously Amaechi has given the traffic situation some thought and is willing to spend serious money on solving it. However he is not applying the right solutions.

On my stroll I noticed that every interloping level crossing was still there part from the ones for Elechi Amadi and Elelenwo Roads. And from every such intersection the traffic tailed away into the distance. It was obvious to me that the problem with Aba Expressway traffic which routinely resulted in city wide gridlock especially on rainy days emanated almost exclusively from those superfluous crossings but my eight year old argument had won no converts, at least not in the Brick House. By the way, traffic flowed smoothly from the Shell junction to Oil Mill and beyond, and back from there to the Shell junction again: where the intersections had been closed there were no further traffic challenges. The apparently intractable Oil Mill Junction nightmare had evaporated into thin air with the interchange. The government of Rivers State needs to close off EVERY level crossing on Aba Expressway. The length of the road does not require more than three proper crossings of the standard of the Oil Mill Junction interchange. What we have at Rumuola will definitely not do. A three lane expressway cannot be choked into basically one lane. Redo Rumuola into a proper interchange (a few houses will have to give way but Amaechi luckily isn’t shy about knocking down properties for public good) and create another interchange at the other end of the road. Thereafter, with the level crossings closed off with permanent barriers, everybody will need to drive at most a few kilometers through smooth flowing traffic to switch to the other side of the road. With the space I saw available on both sides, the road could even be turned to 10 lanes with two service lanes on either side while the central six lanes are reserved for high speed driving.

Don’t we ever have traffic choked on Ikorodu Rd? It happens fairly often but can always be traced to buses dropping passengers on the road, pedestrians playing Russian Roulette by crossing the road without using foot bridges and bad patches on the road. Aba Expressway has all these other issues but scored an own goal by sabotaging its very essence in the design. That road must be redesigned before it chokes PH to death.

Abraham Abiodun Idowu

The news item from Leadership newspaper below answers all questions on this issue. Maybe people should spend less time watching African Magic channel and more watching Discovery, BBC Knowledge etc.

Manhood Theft Allegation: Journalist Demands N40m Damages
The Zamfara State-based journalist and correspondent of the National Life newspaper, Mr Saminu Ibrahim, who was accused of snatching the genitals of a banker recently in Gusau, has demanded N40m as damages for the public denigration of his character.
Counsel to Saminu J.P.A. Agbo, in a letter written to the management of Skye bank plc, described the allegation as most reprehensible and mischievous which, he said, caused the victim of the allegation great damage. It therefore demanded the payment N40m as compensation within two weeks to avoid litigation
It would be recalled that on September 2, 2011 Saminu went to the Skye Bank at the Canteen Road, Gusau, to carry out a transaction whereupon he had an interaction with one of the staff in the bank hall.
Thereafter, whilst still in the bank premises, one of the bank’s employees, Idowu Olatunji, rushed from the bank with the security men attached to the bank shouting that Saminu should be arrested for stealing his manhood.
Consequent upon this allegation, Saminu was arrested and taken to the police station where he was detained for several hours.
After medical examination was conducted on his accuser at the Federal Medical Centre Gusau, Olatunji was found to be healthy, proving his allegation false.

Almost exactly a year ago I posted on NVS my argument for a Sanusi presidency. I reiterate that position today.
http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16651&Itemid=154

@Okeyxyz - I don't know if to feel insulted or flattered . Well I wrote this stuff between 2am and 4am a couple of days ago same way I wrote Making Like Kofi (on the need to switch from incandescent bulbs to CFLs) and The Dream Team (on running SLS, Amaechi and BRF for president, vice and senate president / AGF respectively). These and others can be found on NVS, SaharaReporters etc. I choose to be flattered so no offense taken

@Akanniade - Insolation level in coastal Nigeria is abysmally low with the almost constant cloud cover. I live in Lagos but would have considered solar if I lived in Maiduguri. To overcome Lagos' low insolation level I would have needed to invest well over N10m in supersizing all components of the solar installation. Additionally, as the whole cost of providing power has robbed me of the cashflow to support a mortgage, I would be trying my landlord's patience by setting up such an elaborate rig. Meanwhile solar is not entirely maintenance free. Even deep cycle batteries don't last beyond a couple of years in naija and replacing them so often would be humongous capex every two years or so.

Did you mean 500 naira a ton?

As Serious as a Heart Attack!

Just this week we learnt from Bart Nnaji, the power minister, that Nigeria would at long last be installing the last four turbines for Kainji hydro power station which was initially commissioned in 1968. Yep. After only four decades of operation Kainji would be finally getting its full design complement of turbines. We learnt too that the sixth turbine at the Egbin thermal power station, Nigeria’s power flagship, a role it took over from Kainji, will soon be repaired after years of being cannibalized to keep the other turbines working. The cost of ‘completing’ Kainji and fixing its other turbines is $82m while Egbin would become whole again for less than $10m (N1.5b). Maybe those pittance amounts explain why these first things have been left till last. Maybe having a professional like Nnaji in charge makes the difference. Or maybe we just haven’t been taking this whole powerlessness seriously enough.

Between returning to Nigeria from a near four year sojourn in Ghana in mid 2009 and the end of 2010 I expended about N5m in ensuring I had 24/7 power at home. That was the cost of a 17kva diesel generator, a 10kva inverter and a 7kva backup petrol generator plus fuel and servicing costs over less than 18 months. Power was my largest budget subhead. It beat food, education, rent, locomotion and everything else. It essentially made the difference between buying a house with a mortgage and renting. It was as serious as a heart attack for me.

Back in 2006 Ghana had a power ‘crisis’. I wrote ‘crisis’ because having your neighbourhood programmed for a power outage for 12 hours every two days wouldn’t be seen as a crisis in Nigeria. It was brought on by a multi year drought which reduced Akosombo dam water levels below safe operating levels at a time crude oil prices were ramping up to record levels (Ghana’s second most important power plant was the Takoradi thermal station which ran on liquid fuel) and VALCO’s (the aluminium smelter which was the biggest energy consumer in Ghana) restarting. A perfect storm one could say. Even though the government knew the rains would eventually come and that the West African Gas Pipeline which was then being built would bring relief with cheap gas, it still pulled out all the stops in dealing with what its Nigerian counterpart would have waved off as a temporary and minor glitch.

VALCO’s operation was stopped. Power supply to Togo was rationalized. At this time our Obasanjo volunteered to take up the burden of supplying power to Togo and ‘donating’ about 80MW to Ghana itself. Ghanaians have not stopped laughing since that joke. Ghana’s government also brought in a few million CFL bulbs (energy savers) which were given free of charge to Ghanaians to replace incandescent bulbs that were in use and effectively reduce demand by over 100MWs. Lastly the government published the power rationing schedule which changed every two weeks AND it published daily the vital statistics of the vital Akosombo dam!

Every day, at the top of the Daily Graphic was a small table detailing the water level the previous day, the minimum level the dam could operate at, the maximum level of water the dam could hold and the level of water the dam had same day the previous year. These data were used by laymen, experts and the opposition in vigorously debating the various issues surrounding the power crisis. The opposition of course accused the government of various shenanigans including restarting VALCO as a political gimmick despite the power supply challenges but no one could deny that it all helped in shaping policy including the eventual temporary mothballing of VALCO. That was a country that realized an energy crisis was as serious as a heart attack to the national economy.

Nigeria’s economy suffered an energy sector induced massive heart attack three decades ago and has been on life support since at incalculable cost to individual, commercial and government pockets. Somehow we have failed to give this potentially life threatening situation the attention it deserves. In the last 12 years we have of course given it enough budgetary attention but this has been without any sincerity or consistency. This is the only reason obvious, indeed blatant, low hanging fruit have been left hanging till date. Nnaji has made a good start with his moves on Kainji and Egbin but there are still too many easy opportunities lying around. I enumerate a few below:

Can Nnaji confirm that Kainji and other hydro power plants like Shiroro have been dredged since they were built? If they haven’t been how can the basins capture and retain the maximum amount of water? By the way this is probably a question we should be asking of the Ogun river basin authority that has recently acquired a habit of annual wanton destruction by releasing excess water from its dam. Two obvious questions come to my mind: Why does the river basin authority wait each year until the dam is threatened by collapse before releasing levels of water that create destruction downstream when it should have anticipated the inflow during the rainy season and released water ahead of the deluge? And why is this just a recent development? Could it be that the basin has lost much of its water holding capacity due to silting? In the last week the Eleyele Waterworks has been, hopefully falsely, accused of the same practice and being culpable in the flood that took about 100 lives in Ibadan. Conversely, as part of its water basin management efforts, the Volta River Authority (VRA), managers of the Akosombo dam, recently sold the trees that were drowned when the dam was first filled in the 1960s. Apart from the income made from harvesting the timber one can imagine the level of focus on dam management VRA has.

Can Nnaji tell us when Nigeria will start managing down power consumption via a government mandated switch from incandescent bulbs to Compact Flourescent Lights (CFL)? Virtually every nation on earth has a policy on this for efficiency and environmental reasons. I wrote a piece on this years ago and even managed to share it with one of the energy committees where it was reportedly well received but nothing has come from on high yet. Ghana not only reduced effective demand by over 100MWs through an investment of less than $10m in a few million CFLs but it gained a CFL factory at Tema in the process. Their bulbs are of such high quality that I use them in Nigeria in preference to the Chinese junk available in our market.

Can Nnaji tell us when we shall start being informed about how the little inadequate power we do produce is rationed? If I am only getting power 25% of the time it is crucial for me to know when to expect that fractional supply so that I can arrange my affairs accordingly. If I am a welder, tailor or similar artisan or even if I only have a small generator that cannot power my electrical iron, having such information would buffer me to an extent against the deleterious effects of our decades old deadly affliction. In addition can we get a weekly scorecard on all our capital power plants, say 100MW and above, both operational and under construction? We want to see in simple tabular form just what’s up with each and every one of them. In other lands it is called accountability. If more than half our capital investment is going into the power sector then we need to be kept abreast of what is being done with our money.

Can Nnaji tell us why we do not have an LNG receiving  terminal at Egbin yet? While he is answering this he can tell us too what has delayed the second Escravos to Lagos gas line till date. I know with gas fields just hundreds of kilometers away from Egbin it makes most economic sense to pipe gas to the plant but since the hunters in the Western Niger Delta have learnt to shoot without missing shouldn’t Egbin learn to fly without perching? Shell and Chevron’s gas pipelines are vandalized several times annually with supply outages required once or more a year to fix the lines. For such a major component in our national power infrastructure we need a fallback. Such a fallback will even help the Koreans or whoever finally acquires Egbin to consider building capacity at Egbin to 5,000MW or thereabouts to meet a major part of the energy demand in the Lagos axis.

Can Nnaji tell us why the Ijora power station has lain fallow for so long? Shouldn’t this plant have been used as a pilot for the privatization process a long time ago just as we have with his, Nnaji’s, company’s dedicated supply to Abuja? I believe a private investor given the mandate could easily install anything up to 1,000MW of thermal turbines at Ijora dedicated to supplying Lagos Island, Victoria Island, Ikoyi and Lekki. This would be cherry picking some of the best customers in the land but it would also help prove that privatized power can be made to work in Nigeria and go a long way to make the rollout across the rest of the country possible. Of course a wise investor would put in place backup LNG supply and not only depend on just extending gas supply from Gaslink’s Ijora / Apapa loop.
I am sure there are a lot more bite sized ideas one could challenge Nnaji on but this essay got me out of bed at 3am and I truly trust the good Prof is, for once, a square peg in the Power minister square hole. He knows what all the issues are and hopefully has 1001 solutions up his sleeves. He must go round all power plants nationwide and not depend on reports sent to Abuja by the likes of the reportedly clueless erstwhile administrator of the Olorunshogo thermal plant. I am sure he has a lot more people in critical positions who might be better off pushing files in Abuja or pushing their grandkids’ prams back at home. In addition to rooting all such misfits out the minister must engage with the nation. A monthly parley with the national press wouldn’t be too much considering what is at stake. I wish him well in his job and hope that he will succeed in finally getting his patient out of the intensive care unit.

Abraham Idowu